


In this moment of unity

by softgrungeprophet



Series: Compass [6]
Category: Venom (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Eddie Brock/Venom Symbiote, Family, First Meetings, Gen, Hair Brushing, Haircuts, Happy, Mental Link, Reminiscing, Sibling Bonding, Teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 14:43:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17469521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softgrungeprophet/pseuds/softgrungeprophet
Summary: A year after moving back to San Francisco, Eddie and his other have settled into a stable life with Eddie's sister Mary, living in Sanctuary--the underground sunken neighborhood-turned-community.But Mary doesn't know about Venom, yet.They decide it's about time she was introduced.





	In this moment of unity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RecordRewind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RecordRewind/gifts).



> RecordRewind asked me: "Will you write [Eddie] talking to her about the Symbiote...? I would be very curious to see how he would explain about them to Mary, and her reaction..."
> 
> I don't always do requests but I made a little note to myself, and now, I got around to it...  
> So here's that!  
> Set about a year after the ending of [Compass](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16892598) but you don't have to have finished that to understand. Though TECHNICALLY this would probably be a spoiler for the ending now that I think about it.
> 
> Title from the song "[Coming](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoGjHcQ5kfo),"by Jimmy Somerville, which you may know from the ending of the movie _Orlando_.

"Move your head.."

Eddie complied, allowing Mary to tilt his head forward just so, to reach the spot behind his ear. The clippers tickled, but at the same time there was something soothing in having a trustworthy person at his back and a firm touch fussing over him. It reminded him almost of his childhood, though of course she had never shaved his head for him growing up, nor would she have ever agreed to, even if he had needed her to.

Still, it was nice.

The symbiote murmured inside of his chest. It was unfamiliar with the concept of a haircut, aside from images from the TV and vague memories of Flash Thompson in a barber's chair, before he left the planet for the first time. Eddie frowned and shook his head reflexively to clear the memory—

"Hey!" Mary moved quick on the draw, snapping her hands away from his head. "Watch it. You want me to cut your ear off?"

Eddie rolled his eyes. "There's a _guard_."

"Not when I'm behind your _ears_ , you big dork." She waved the antique clippers at him, silver blades glinting in the lamplight. "I took it off like, five minutes ago. Where's your brain at??"

Okay, a fair point.

"I must have gotten distracted."

"I'll say." She pressed her hands to the side of his head to realign everything, and returned very delicately to her task.

The row house did not have electricity, lit only by gas, and as a result everything felt very quiet and still. Eddie could hear the mechanisms of the manual clippers Mary wielded, and the symbiote curled contentedly through his bones at this reprieve from the many busy frequencies and vibrations of the outside world. Trace radio waves leaked through, here and there, in the gaps of the sewers that hung above them, but very weakly.

"There."

Mary brushed the stray hairs from his ear and the back of his neck, stepping back and setting the clippers aside. "All cleaned up."

Eddie stood. "Thanks." He dusted his shoulders off with a wrinkle of his nose. "Your turn?"

They swapped places, the symbiote discreetly bubbling up through his skin to absorb all the little hairs with a sub-vocalized warble. Eddie settled on the old antique stool—Mary's hair reached almost down to her knees, and she would never let him near it with shears or anything sharp... But that wasn't his job. He reached for the antique silver hair brush left by whoever had evacuated when the neighborhood sank below San Francisco. Mirror-bright spots had been rubbed into the tarnished surface by his and Mary's hands in the past year.

She let her hair down over the back of the kitchen chair they had dragged into the bathroom, and settled with her hands folded in her lap.

She could have done this herself, but it seemed only fair to help her where she helped him, especially after a childhood of unreasonable responsibilities...

So Eddie began to brush her hair out, while she spoke of her new job.

Eddie had teased her, when she first got hired. "Are you going to find yourself a swanky San Francisco apartment?" But... with her medical bills, from so long comatose... Sanctuary remained the only viable option, with its communal food and the generator in the square running a few shoddy, mid-century refrigerators salvaged from the dump. The gas lamps and the fuzzy radio receiver in the makeshift town hall. In some ways, it barely differed from Eddie's previous situations—he'd never owned a phone, or a computer, so that disconnect from the outside world didn't bother him much. But he sometimes missed being able to watch the news or listen to the radio—very rarely. And he knew Mary missed it more than him.

Yet at the same time, he knew she felt a strange kind of guilt-laced gratitude.

She had confided in him, once, not long after they moved into the dusty Victorian house in its row of other dusty Victorian houses—Had said to him, one night, listening to old, old music on an old, old Victrola which must have been bought brand new the very same year the earthquake hit—had said to him, "I feel bad, sometimes, but... I'm kind of glad no one can reach me." She had looked down at her hands, in the half-darkness, on the old sofa. "I don't think I'd be able to fit back into most people's lives after so long." A very sad look.

"—ddie? Eddie?"

Eddie blinked back into the present. "Sorry—"

"You can stop brushing now." Mary cast a smile over her shoulder. Teasing. "Space cadet."

The symbiote tittered in the back of his head.

 _Don't you start_.

"I guess I'm not very focused today." Eddie let the brush balance on his thigh and gathered her hair together. Twisted it up into a low bun with the deftness of practice—he did this at least once a week and now it came to him as naturally as anything else, no doubt with some assistance from his other.

Once he let her go, Mary turned around in the chair, resting her arms on the latticed back and raising her eyebrows as she looked at him. "What's on your mind, buttface?"

Eddie shook his head. "Just life." He stood and set the hair brush aside. Looked at himself in the mirror, in the low light. No overtaken reflection, there, not like the early days. But a little hint of it. A shadow of teeth along his jaw and the occasional wink of eyes for just a moment. Like one of those 3D images that changed with the angle.

**Eddie...**

He ran his hand down the front of shirt as if to smooth it, but really to soothe his other.

"Okay, well, you do whatever—I'm gonna head downstairs."

"Yeah," Eddie nodded. "Okay."

Mary shut the bathroom door as she left, taking the chair and stool with her, and Eddie sighed.

 **We should tell her**.

He pulled at the hem of his shirt, and it dissolved away. "Is that why you've been so quiet today?"

A black hand briefly lifted from his skin to caress his face, then sank into his cheek. He touched his fingertips to the spot, himself.

 **You told her about our child**.

"I did."

The rest of his clothes disintegrated as well, as a tendril reached from his back to draw the shower curtain. The pipes rumbled almost threateningly, so old and creaky it was a wonder they worked. But they _did_ work, and the bath came on with a spitting, coughing noise.

 **Everyone here knows**.

The symbiote had a point—the acknowledgment of which drew a warm, smug purr up Eddie's throat and through his chest. She knew about Sleeper, who obviously was not human. She knew something was up. Everyone in Sanctuary knew about the symbiote—about Venom, about what Venom meant as a relationship. They babysat the local children together, while Mary was at work during the day. They draped all over each other in line for lunch, or while playing cards with the neighbors' sons and daughters.

**So why won't you tell her?**

He was afraid.

What if she turned him away.

Their press in those days hadn't exactly been glowing praise, after all.

The monstrous man out to kill Spidey—

 **Eddie**.

He stepped into the tub with a sigh, as it filled. "I know."

**************************

"Mary?"

She looked up from her library book with a questioning noise.

Eddie felt, suddenly, very much like he had as a kid—small and shy. But this was _Mary_ , his sister. They'd always been there for each other, once they got old enough to realize they were better as allies than rivals. Teased each other, made weird inside jokes together. She was his hero, and his role model, more than anyone else. It was her, moving to New York, cutting ties with their father, who made him realize he didn't have to live under the shadow of neglect anymore. It was her who showed him what it meant to be independent and self-sufficient.

He held his arms out at his sides, a show of vulnerability as well as a gesture to broadcast his intent. "I want you to meet my other half."

Mary narrowed her eyes. "Wait—" She held one hand up.

Eddie's heart skipped, but he waited.

The symbiote purred nervously under his skin.

"Are you about to introduce me to your baby mama?"

Sharp as a tack.

A knowing smirk.

Eddie let himself breathe again, with a small smile.

He moved his hands to his chest—to his heart—and muttered, "You can come out now, darling."

His other flowed within him, through him, out into the air, enveloping him. The two of them became each other, rising a couple of feet in height as bulk overtook and stretched Eddie's frame into an exaggeration of itself, an augmentation.  The most serene of sensations; teeth sprouting—though not too many teeth, better to make a good first impression—white lines forming, muscles defining.

They looked at her, together, suddenly rid of their nervousness.

She didn't seem afraid of them. A little awed, fascinated. She set her book aside and leaned forward—stood, slowly, and took a step closer. "May I?" She held her hand out.

"Of course."

She reached out to them, and they took her hand, half as if to shake and half as a gesture of recognition.

"You're _Venom_?" She smiled up at them, pressing her other hand around their fingers.

" **We are...** "

She let out a soft breath. "That's crazy." Her grin sharpened, teasing. "So what am I, your sister in law?"

They chuckled.

Black receded and realigned Eddie's head to where one might expect it to be, small for their body—they shrunk down until he stood with a slick of black covering him, and a curl around his neck that became the symbiote's favored non-threatening face. Eel-like, white-eyed, but slightly more humanoid than usual. Teeth hidden away, out of sight.

Mary reached out again, and again paused just a moment—but Eddie nodded as she met his eye, so she extended her hand and stroked the symbiote's head. It trilled softly, eyes squinting closed.

"So..." Mary spoke as she petted the symbiote. "Venom is... both of you? Or...?"

Eddie nodded. "We are Venom, together."

"So does... this... one have a name?"

"'This one'?" Eddie snorted.

She gave his shoulder a little thwap. "I don't know what to call—like, is it—a she? Or a he, or something else?"

He shook his head, and gave his other a quick kiss before it sank into his skin. "No, it doesn't have a name, or a gender. I call it my 'Other,' or whatever pet name springs to mind but... Names aren't really necessary, exactly. We're in each other's thoughts, constantly, everything is conceptual. There's no need to call it by anything because I simply think of it, and it's there. If that makes sense."

She tilted her head, finally taking a step back as she considered him.

Then a nod. "Yeah, I think it does."

 **Eddie, she likes me**.

He couldn't stop a small, breathless laugh from escaping. All the tension they had built up between each other in the past year, all the anxieties and fear of rejection—all washed away by relief and happiness and love. Eddie steadied himself, wiping at his eyes. He wasn't crying, he really wasn't, they just kept watering, suddenly, even though he was happy.

"Hey." Mary held her hand out again. "Why are you crying, crybaby?"

Eddie didn't answer, just took her arm and pulled her into a hug.

The symbiote wound a small black tendril around them both.

 **Happy, Eddie**.

 _Yes_...

Very happy.

**Author's Note:**

> IDK how hair growth/maintenance works in instances of long periods of hospitalization, so idk if mary's hair would have actually been allowed to grow all through that, but I figure.... why not.  
> Mary is cutting Eddie's hair with manual clippers like this: [link](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/BeardClipSqueeze.jpg)
> 
> Obvs, as I mentioned, this is set in the timeline after Compass, so Eddie had previously introduced Mary to Sleeper (in this chapter: [link](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16892598/chapters/40257275)), as his child, with a similar "I want you to meet someone"-esque line
> 
> *thinking emoji* eddie telling his sister he's part of venom/introducing her to the symbiote as the parent of his child sure is a coming-out metaphor if I've EVER seen one and I Will Embrace It. also now I'm wondering how often/if ever eddie has revealed his part in Venom, like, of his own volition, fully on purpose, not on accident, and I don't actually know. I'm sure it's probably happened once or twice without any weird extenuating circumstances.
> 
> There's a CHANCE the symbiote is more familiar with haircuts than I imply, considering the mullet in the 90s but... i was thinking about it and all the main times Eddie's hair got shorter while he was Venom were like.... chemotherapy.... being set on fire... that kind of stuff...so i extrapolated.


End file.
